The Afterlife
Parashat Chayei Sarah begins with the verse: “The lifetime of Sarah was one hundred years, twenty years, and seven years; the years of Sarah’s life.” The concluding words, “the years of Sarah’s life,” seem redundant, for the verse opens with the words “the lifetime of Sarah.” Yet, it is just such redundancies that alert us to deeper meanings in the text. In this case, the fact that the Hebrew word for “the years” (shenei) can also mean “two” reveals an important truth, for it suggests that Sarah had two sets of years, or “two lifetimes.”
While the oral tradition makes many references to an afterlife, the Written Torah never explicitly mentions one. This makes the allusion in our verse all the more important. Indeed, perhaps an even more obvious allusion to the notion of an afterlife in this portion is the simple fact that even though the portion speaks about Sarah’s death it is called Chayei Sarah, a phrase that can be translated literally as “the lifetimes of Sarah.” That Sarah’s “two lifetimes” are both defined as “living” makes sense considering the rabbinic teaching that, “the righteous in death are called alive, while the wicked, even in life, are called dead.”
Significantly, Sarah’s death leads to Abraham’s first purchase of land in the Land of Canaan: a life-affirming symbol that Abraham and Sarah’s descendants will eventually inherit the entire land and transform it into the Land of Israel. Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of the Machpeilah and the surrounding land for 400 silver shekels alludes to this as the sages teach that the borders of the Land of Israel are 400 parsah (each parsah being a distance of approximately four kilometers) by 400 parsah. Furthermore, the Zohar explicitly states that the Cave of Machpeilah is a microcosm of the entire land of Israel.
These 400 silver shekels also allude to the Zohar’s tradition that the soul inherits 400 “worlds” of Divine pleasure in the World to Come. Thus, the Land of Israel—symbolized by the Cave of Machpeilah—can be understood as the place where Divine pleasure and revelation are most accessible. The Land of Israel serves as a bridge between the physical and the spiritual, between this world and the World to Come. It is the place where the fine line between life and death is transcended.
From Efron to Abraham
The Torah concludes the story of Abraham’s purchase of Sarah’s burial plot by stating that the field with its cave “rose up ... unto Abraham for a purchase.” Rashi explains that the wording “rose up” literally means “entered the possession of.” However, he also explains the word metaphorically, citing the Midrash that the land Abraham purchased to bury Sarah was elevated because it left a commoner’s possession and entered a king’s.
The commoner referred to is Efron who owned the field and cave Abraham wanted to purchase. At first, he offered to give it as a gift but in the end asked for an enormous amount of money. The numerical value of Efron (ןֹרְפֶע) is also 400, the same as an “evil eye” (ןִיַע עַר), indicating that this was Efron’s mode of perceiving others. Abraham, on the other hand, looked upon everyone with “pure eyes” (םִיַינֵר עֹהוְט), an expression whose value is also 400. Thus, through the purchase of the field and the cave by Abraham for 400 pieces of silver it was elevated to a new level altogether, nullifying Efron’s “evil eye.”
Tav, the Land of Israel, and Divine Consciousness
The number 400 is the numerical value of the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet, tav (ת). The name of this letter when spelled out is תיו, which equals 416. Since the land is 400 by 400 parsah it also alludes to two letters tav. If we substitute the letter tav with its name, then we have 2 times תיו, or 2 times 416, which equals 832. Amazingly, 832 is the exact value of the words, “Land of Israel” (לֵאָרְׂשִץ יֶרֶא).
Every day in the morning service we recite praises of the angels on High. The prophet Isaiah relates that one group of angels proclaims “Holy, holy, holy is the God of Hosts, the whole world is full of His glory.” The sages juxtapose a response spoken by another group of angels and taken from the Book of Ezekiel, “Blessed is the glory of God from His place.”
We would normally say that God’s place is the upper realms, where the angels surround Him like hosts. Yet, when multiplying the numerical value of God’s essential four-letter Name, Havayah (הוה-י) whose value is 26 by the word “glory” (דֹבוּכ), whose value is 32, the product is once again, “Land of Israel” (לֵאָרְׂשִץ יֶרֶא), 832. In other words, even though the glory of God is manifest everywhere and at every moment, it is most revealed and concentrated in the Land of Israel.
This confirms a profound teaching of the Maggid of Mezritch. The Ba’al Shem Tov was often heard saying the syllable “af ” (ףַא). The Maggid of Mezritch explained that his meaning was that “af ” is the initials of the words, “Emanation is here” (הֹפּתּילוִצֲא). The World of Emanation, Atzilut, is the highest and most Divinely infused of all of the worlds. The Ba’al Shem Tov was declaring that even though a plain reading of Kabbalah would have us think that Emanation is somewhere else and is inaccessible to the common man, this is not the case. Emanation is present everywhere, even in every facet of life experienced by common people. For Emanation is the consciousness that “God is all and all is God,” and every person can attain this understanding, wherever they are and in whatever situation they find themselves in. Thus, although in one sense the four Kabbalistic Worlds are hierarchical, in another sense they are each manifest in a holistic manner in this the lowest of all of the created worlds. It is in the Land of Israel that this consciousness of Emanation is most easily attained, and from our Holyland, it is meant to spread to every corner of reality, the secret of “the Land of Israel is destined to spread everywhere in the world.”
Cure Before Ailment
On close inspection, the number 400 is already mentioned in the Torah when God made His first covenant with Abraham, the covenant over the Land of Israel: “On that day God made a covenant with Abram saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land.’”
